Wow what an awesome departure from Gibraltar. People came down to see me off. The send off was filmed. See the Youtube video, and a great cheer went up as I took my first pedal off on this epic journey to England.
A little boy on a trike was very eager to come with me, and started following me, out onto the road leaving his mum to go chasing after him! Andrea, he's going to cycle the whole world when he's older! He definately wanted to come to England with me! Not sure his trike would have managed the hills that followed.
A couple of guys from the local cycling club followed me out the first 25km which was nice to have some company at the beginning. We grabbed a coffee, and then they headed back to Gibraltar whilst I went my seperate ways. Then thats it, it hit me. Im alone now. And im going to be until I get to England :)
The day was then full of ups!! Lots of ups! HILLS! 850m climb to Gaucin then up to 850m then up and down and finally peaking out at 1000m before heading down to Ronda. Today was an easy one in the sense that I've cycled to Ronda from Gibraltar before. But there was a definate sense of this is different!! The uphills were relentless with all the extra weight in the bike.
Thank you to everyone who has been sending me messages from the site. I have been getting them all :) I cant always reply but will do my best!
Finished up in Camping Sur just outside Ronda. Went to a restaurant for a huge nice bit of steak! Sitting outside at night and it warm. Something that wont be happening in a couple of weeks! Fantastic start, all went to plan. Except for GPS and data on the phone not working this morning. (people thought i hadnt set off and chickened out as the map didnt move!!) And i thought id lost my keys at one point, meaning I had to unpack the whole bike at Jimena. But found them eventually!
| Todays stats | |
|---|---|
| Start | Gibraltar Casemates.10:10 |
| End | Just South of Ronda.20:15 |
| Saddle Time | 6 hr 29 min 45 sec. |
| Distance travelled | 101.41km |
| Average Speed | 15.6kph |
| Max speed | 59.8km |
Thank you to Johannes for putting these videos together, First one is my speech, the second is the launch!
No comments:
Post a Comment